How To Set Up Your Wireless Router for Gaming

Are your online gaming sessions plagued by frequent disconnects or the inability to hear other players during chat sessions when connected to the same private network? NAT restrictions may be the culprit. NAT is Network Address Translation, a technology that allows the one IP address Internet Service Providers give to a home account to be shared across all the devices in that home's network. This means that all of those devices can connect to the Internet with help of a router.

 NAT Restrictions
Some routers set NAT type at strict or moderate level by default. This may result in blocked ports that should be open for a smooth online gaming experience. You can remedy this problem by contacting the gaming console manufacturer to find out which ports should be opened for gaming on their system (PC gamers check with the software developers to see if you need to pay attention to port configuration if you are having problems). Once you find out which ports need to be opened to allow traffic in and out of your network, you can use a feature called port forwarding in the router's software to configure the ports.

 Port Forwarding
You may be able to find this information online. Microsoft lists which ports have to be opened to resolve connection issues using the Xbox 360 in this document. For instance, one of the ports that has to be open is port 3074, and the protocol (the type of network traffic) that has to be allowed through) is TCP. Below is a port forwarding rule created in the Cisco Linksys E3000 router that opens port 3074 for TCP traffic:

 Double NAT
If you experience slow game play, you can also check to make sure you don't have two devices both performing NAT (loosely called "double-natting"). For example, some ISPs are now providing cable and DSL modems that also can act as access points and wireless routers. If you also have a wireless router on the network such as devices from Belkin or Linksys, the cable/DSL modem and the wireless router could both be performing NAT which can kill network performance. This also holds true for those who may have two routers deployed in their network for bridging or signal repeating. There should be only one routing device performing NAT in a network; typically this is the wireless router or the cable/DSL modem-access point.

 UPnP
Finally, to resolve issues with communicating with other gamers or disconnects within your network, make sure you have Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) enabled on the router and on the connected devices on the network. UPnP is a standard that helps routers communicate with other devices on networks and allows those devices to discover and communicate with each other.